An effective tax system should be simple and not subject to change every time an elected official steps up to a microphone. The most effective tax system we could devise, however, cannot overcome the economic and social problems of a government that has grown too large and consumes too much of our productive effort.

Capital, like the tools of the craftsman, benefits us all when it is allowed to be deployed by those who are most experienced and focused on deploying it wisely, by those who truly understand the risks and costs. An economy built with expropriated tools is not built to last.

The second reason that the large publicly held companies may do OK is that the larger companies have the administrative infrastructure to deal with the onslaught of upcoming and recently passed regulations. As the smaller privately held companies close that leaves their market share to the larger companies. Large companies can thrive in a highly regulated environment.

But higher labor costs drive larger companies to get more output from existing employees and it drives smaller companies out of business.

Hedrick Smith reaches back well over a half century to find a prescription to cure our social ills, while ignoring all of the real factors hindering our current economy today. But he stumbled on a real truth that he unsurprisingly missed: That the private sector is quite capable of attaining social justice when it is freed of the burdensome restrictions and friction costs imposed by the excessive central planning of the state that we now face.

We are fully aware of the benefits of a government to provide a secure environment to grow, and the infrastructure to move our products. But those in business are also keenly aware of the ever increasing burdens inflicted on those businesses by poorly thought out, never ending, always changing regulations and mandates. You can’t brag on the benefits without accepting responsibility for the burdens.

Why would I, a citizen of Macon, GA, send money to Scott Walker in Madison, Wisconsin? Because unions have become a threat to the nation. The Democrats have made the unions a critical client group in spite of their greatly reduced significance in American commerce. In fact the only growth area for unions has been in government. And thanks to Scott Walker that has been greatly reduced in his state. Once he ceased making union membership mandatory for state workers, the ranks quickly shrank. “[19]AFSCME’s Local 24 in Madison, which represented 22,300 Wisconsin state workers last year, has seen its membership shrink by two-thirds, to 7,100.” [19]

All of these factions of the conservative movement saw the government as the tool of change. They favored a big government and only wished to steer the machine in a different direction from the objectives of the liberal establishment. Both share a sense of moral supremacy and a distrust of individual rights and choice. Both establishments favored construction of a government that could serve the whims of the party in power.

But big government conservatives failed to look beyond their administrations. Any power bestowed on a central government must be considered as if it were in the hands of their worst nightmare.